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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669338">Good Mourning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etcetera/pseuds/Etcetera'>Etcetera</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gravity Falls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Stan's morning routine, Stangst, Stream of Consciousness, kind of deals with mourning though without a death taking place or anyone being actually dead, like pre-series but prob. post mullet, younger stan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:35:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669338</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etcetera/pseuds/Etcetera</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Every morning is the same when you're living a life of uncertainty and regret. At least, that's how it feels to Stan.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ford Pines &amp; Stan Pines</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Good Mourning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a reimagining and rewrite of an old oneshot of mine and I like this version much better.<br/>I listened to this track on repeat while writing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCRo8RLZ8dA</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Every morning, Stan must fight the urge to throw that goddamn alarm clock into the wall and euthanize its metallic rattle once and for all. But every morning, even in his sleep fogged mind, he knows he’d just have to get another one, so may as well just spare himself the effort.</p><p>With a weary sigh, his feet get dropped over the side of his borrowed bed and into the worn slippers awaiting them. He’d replace the ratty things if they weren’t among the scant belongings that were solely <em>his</em> and not part of the inherited debris of this borrowed house, where he lived under a borrowed name and the sleepless nights of borrowed paranoia.</p><p>He always has to sit there a moment, partly to get his bearings, but mostly to gag down the discontent settling in like a lingering bacterial infection of the psyche. It never goes away, that lousy feeling, but god does he try to ignore it.</p><p>
  <em>Swallow it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Choke on it if you gotta, but for fuck’s sake just force it down.</em>
</p><p>Things like <em>feelings</em> have no place to be ruminated on here. Not when there’s work to do and so much at stake. So up on his feet he goes, to stumble through the inky darkness of 5:00 ante meridian, leaving another night of restlessness behind him.</p><p>The first part of his routine is setting the coffee to brew, in the same percolator his current namesake had used. He remembers how hesitant he had been to wash it at first, because those coffee stains had been made by his brother and his brother was gone and god, maybe he’d never see him again. Maybe all that truly remains of his twin is ephemera and the small, unimportant traces he left behind. Those little signs that Ford had been here, that Ford had <em>lived</em> here. Stan cherished the ubiquitous disarray of things like old coffee stains, muddy boot tracks left to dry on a welcome mat and a pair of glasses collecting dust in a closed off room. He cherished the teeth marks left on a well-used pen more than he cared about the cursive words of that damned journal somedays.</p><p>
  <em>Don’t. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Don’t dwell.</em>
</p><p>He tries his damnedest not to. Ford is out there, somewhere, in that big vast nothing he was dragged kicking and screaming into. He knows it, because Ford <em>has to</em> be and because he’d know it if he were truly gone, right?</p><p>
  <em>Don’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Don’t think about that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Don’t you dare.</em>
</p><p>The coffee scalds its way down his throat and into his innards, like always, because he never lets it cool enough. He almost enjoys the feeling of his guts getting boiled, because at least it’s something else to feel. Something different from that deep, pervasive sadness and the not knowing.</p><p>The uniform of his current life is uncomfortably slid into like a second skin that makes him itch. Not physically—it’s a nice dress shirt, really—rather, somewhere in the back of his mind. Somewhere deep down, buried with the rest of who he used be, lying adjacent to the guilt of who he had to become, because he can’t afford to be <em>himself</em> anymore. He hasn’t been himself in a long time, even before all this, but his novelty tie feels so much more like a noose now. The costume of his new identity sticks into his pores like pinpricks and feels like a rash; a constant reminder of the lies he tells just to get by in this pantomime of an existence.</p><p>The cabin is bathed in blue by then, in that cold precursor to dawn. Every morning is the same, but he can’t help but to stand there in it, taking stock of his life. Everything uniform and quiet and ephemeral as it lays before him, cloaked in cobalt. He sees himself more in these haunted blue moments than in his own reflection these days, where his own tired eyes stare back at him, accusatory and terrified. He doesn’t even have to imagine Ford looking at him that way.</p><p>Ford isn’t dead, he hopes, but the memory of him still haunts his every waking moment. He also feels like a haunted memory, himself. Floating as lethargically as the dust particles caught in that first beam of sunlight. Used up and empty, but nowhere to go, just suspended mid-air. Drifting through the walls to accumulate traces of himself in the corners of someone else’s life, while his own lies buried in an empty grave. No body to inter, just a memory and maybe not even a good one.</p><p>He wonders if Ford would have mourned <em>him, </em>had things gone another way. He wonders if he’s mourning the loss of himself as much as he mourns the loss of his brother. Except he <em>isn’t </em>mourning Ford, because Ford is not dead, because Ford <em>cannot</em> be dead.</p><p>As quickly as it came, the blue fades away, swallowed up whole by a merciless sun.</p><p>It’s onto the next stage: breakfast. He isn’t hungry, but with an income that now provides him the option to eat, he tries to at least not take that for granted. No skipping meals. He’s almost forgotten the chronic, gnawing ache of hunger pangs that once plagued him in his time spent as a wayward vagabond. He doesn’t want to remember that feeling, too, when there are still so many other agonizing regrets to terrorize his dreams.</p><p>He flips the pancake in the pan in a small act intended to amuse himself.</p><p>It doesn’t. Precious little does anymore.</p><p>He tucks into it without fanfare, allowing his mind to wander, in no particular rush because this is the slow season. Part of him hopes a few straggling tourists or townsfolk will meander in for a tour to break up the monotony and force him out of his own head. The other part wishes everyone would just go the hell away, bills to pay be damned.</p><p>He doesn’t realize he’s bitten the inside of his cheek until he tastes the coppery tang of blood. It’s just washed down with another gulp of coffee, all dull aches ignored. If there’s nothing else he’s good at, it’s burying pain.</p><p>His morning on autopilot complete, on goes his jacket and knit cap before he sets out on the brief trek to the mailbox, which he hasn’t checked in days. No news is good news.</p><p>The thud and crunch of his heavy footfalls across a frosty autumn terrain sounds to him like the beating of an old, aching heart, cracking along its seams with every beat. His would break itself to pieces if he gave it the chance.</p><p>He doesn’t dare. There’s too much needing to be done and only him left to do it.</p><p>So, he carries on.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is written as semi-stream of consciousness meets prose. It was done as an exercise to get me writing again, mostly. I know I probably overused the word “he,” but hopefully not in a way that felt tedious; I limited the use of Stan’s name on purpose, to drive home his growing disconnect from his own identity. Also, this is set sometime within his first few years living under Ford's identity.</p><p>Anywho, I’m always happy to hear from people! Feel free to find me on my Gravity Falls tumblr: https://funkielittlebeastie.tumblr.com/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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